SACRAMENTO (CBS SF) – A lawmaker has unveiled details on a plan to dramatically change the way Californians receive healthcare with a single-payer system.

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State Senators Ricardo Lara and Toni Atkins introduced Senate Bill 562 or the “Healthy California Act” this week.

According to Lara’s office, all 39 million Californians would be covered. The plan would include coverage for medical, emergency, dental, vision, mental health, and nursing home care. Co-pays and insurance deductibles would also be eliminated.

Insurance companies would be barred from offering coverage for services already included in the plan.

The plan would also allow Californians to choose their doctor from a list of providers, and it would cover Californians while traveling.

There were proposals for single-payer systems in 2007 and in 2011. Neither plan won approval from the voters or the legislature.

RoseAnn Demoro from the California Nurses Association said in a statement. “There has been a seismic shift in our political system through grassroots activism; we have an inspired, motivated base that will make its voice heard.”

Opponents of the plan raise concerns about the cost. The single payer proposal in 2007 was estimated to have cost $209 billion, which would have meant wage tax hikes for employees and employers.

For this new proposal, the cost or financial plan remains to be seen.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Gov. Jerry Brown expressed skepticism in the state’s ability to fund the plan.

Comments (19)
  1. California simply does not have the money, and California has no way of taxing the money out of the few who actually still pay taxes. California already has unacknowledged pension debts up the wazoo that Jerry Brown will NOT put on the books as good accounting principles demand.

    And don’t expect the Feds to provide cash for this. We have a national debt approaching $20 trillion dollars. Even if we started to pay a billion dollars per DAY until the debt was paid off, it would still take over 54 YEARS to do so. Work it on a calculator to prove it. We can’t pay that and find the money to run the country. Same thing for California. We can’t pay for pensions AND the daily cost of running the state AND free healthcare for all. There is simply not enough money to go around. There are not enough people who want to go through years of medical school and nursing school to become doctors and nurses who will be willing to work for minimum wage for the rest of their lives.

    Face it, any Democrat who promises otherwise is simply lying.

    1. That’s quite a “can’t do” attitude – Canada manages to pull this off, has the same size population but a much smaller economy than California. The benefits of having an efficient healthcare system pay huge dividends in the long term. And yes, I lived in Canada for 33 years so I know firsthand what I’m talking about.

  2. Tina Pence says:

    Yes, your taxes would go up. But, your separate payment either on your own or through your employer for health insurance premiums would go away.

  3. Have the government collect $50 from individuals and with 300 million population that is $15 billion per month. Do you think it is not enough for the government to implement and operate the single-payer system? There will be a lot of resistance coming from insurance companies and bribing law makers not to pass it I guess.

  4. So many things wrong with this plan: Lara did not mention that Federal Medicare will be forbidden. All seniors currently on Medicare will have to dis-enroll. No more employer health plans. How will Google employees feel about that? Benefits and coverage to be determined on an annual basis by a panel picked by the legislature. That’s another way of saying health care and dollars will be rationed. Benefits will also cover illegal aliens, who don’t pay income taxes and will not be paying into the system. Upper income taxpayers will flood out of the state and illegal aliens will flood in. You think a crumbling dam in Oroville is an example of CA not taking care of its infrastructure? Imagine what the state will look like when all the money goes to pay for health care.